(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Uri Avner on the history of convert-or-die in Islam

In his lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.

As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations".

[...]

True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.

Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

[...]

There no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics reconquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll tax, but were exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.

Dude's got a point. Whether that holds for current people or not is, really, not the point at all.

Comments

[mightycodking.livejournal.com]

What the hell is a Jewish atheist?

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Someone who is ethnically Jewish but not religiously Jewish.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"Jew" as ethnic group instead of religion.

He's an atheist, whose matrilineal line is that of the Jewish people. This is a linguistic problem pretty much unique to them - to my knowledge, no other religion and ethnic group share the exact same label.

[matgb]

Sikh, on a technicality. But it's irrelevent. Friend of mine is Jewish, would be an atheist but feels the need to remain jewish so says he believes in God.

But yeah, good article, thx.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Hi.

[bellacrow.livejournal.com]

weird. My father is Persian, his mother was a Persian Jew. Her family broke off all ties with her when she married a Muslim. My father was tortured and taunted for being a "Jew-boy" in Shiraz.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Not "weird" so much as "history isn't necessarily current", and the fact that there's a big difference between "no forcible conversion" and "acceptance".

[mazarinade.livejournal.com]

At least one of the examples isn't actually true; Maimonides was forcibly converted to Islam and had to flee Andalus for a less-repressive area of the Muslim world. It wasn't, historically, as rosy as it's painted in that piece, nor was it as bad as it's painted by some.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

The Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary has Islamic-style patterned exterior decor. St. Matthias's Temple, a cathedral despite the name, has it on the inside, surrounding images of saints.

Ottoman influence is all over the place in the architecture and decoration of that city.

[paoconnell.livejournal.com]

So--what happened to change a tolerant religion to an intolerant one? There was the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. Did the Islamic world lose it at that point? Do any of you know much about that period in the Middle East? Was it the movement of Jewish people to Palestine? There have to be well researched books written on the subject.

[mazarinade.livejournal.com]

The mistake is thinking of the Islamic world as all one place, when it's not. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are separated by a few miles of water, but they're radically different places with radically different conceptions of what constitutes good Islamic practice. Iran differs from both again. Pakistan is different again. And so on.

[paoconnell.livejournal.com]

True--the religion has tolerant members, and intolerant ones apparently intent on the "convert or die" thing. Some of those religious differences are geographically separated. Come to think of it, many Christian religions vary greatly in their degree of ecumenicalism (the fundamentalist religions--hundreds of them--being particularly intolerant).

Tolerance of Christians and Jews is specifically written right into the Koran, but the Muslim radicals ignore that.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, but it clearly happens on an hourly basis. Just let me pick and choose news articles on actions motivated by Christianity, and I can show you.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

The current Pope made it abundantly clear that he did not agree with the late Byzantine emperor, and with good reason. Spreading the faith at swordpoint was a matter of pride for mediaeval Christianity, and for some while after this as well. Conversely, yes, periodically Muslim empires were quite content to let Jews and Christians keep their faith. However, there is good reason to ask what Muhamad brought into the world that was not already explicit in Judaism and/or Christianity. In many ways he was more comparable to Joseph Smith than to the supposedly supernatural founders of ancient religions.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

There is one God, and Mohammed is His Prophet. Jesus isn't divine, and Jews aren't the "chosen people," as God is the God of all. Salvation is between you and God, and between you and God only. God doesn't forgive your sins because a priest said so or you prayed for a long time; you should seek to undo the hurt you've caused.

Those are the main theological-point differences. The biggest one is probably the bit where Jesus isn't divine. Worship differences are pretty much window dressing.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

As I'm sure you will agree, this looks more like a synthesis between Judaism (strict monotheism) and Christianity (ethnic universality, also the focus on mercy which is very prominent in the actual text). It seems that Muhamad was attempting to purify the existing Judeo-Christian faith, but as we know this was not well received by any of the parties and so Islam became a new religion.

From time to time mystics or prophets will arise in any religion to restore its purity. On a rare occasion they may succeed, as may have happened to Judaism at the end of the Babylonian enslavement. Other times they create sects, as with Protestantism, Methodism, Baptism etc. Sometimes the difference is too great, and a new religion arises, as with Christianity, Islam or Baha'i faith. Sometimes something in-between, as with the Latter-Day Saints. I guess it depends on the religious climate of its age as much as the prophet.